Chapter 3 - The Midnight Breach
The sprawling Sterling estate was surrounded by ten-foot iron gates and patrolled by heavily armed private security contractors.
It was exactly the kind of arrogant, overconfident perimeter I used to dismantle in my sleep during the Cold War.
I dressed in completely black tactical gear, slipping silently through the dense woods bordering the back of his massive property.
I used a scrambled frequency emitter to temporarily blind the thermal cameras mounted on the stone walls.
Scaling the trellis on the side of the mansion took only seconds, my muscle memory returning with deadly precision.
I bypassed the biometric lock on Julian's second-floor balcony window using a cloned keycard I had fabricated from his hospital data.
I stepped silently into his lavish, mahogany-paneled private study.
I needed physical evidence of his trafficking ring to ensure the federal government would lock him away forever.
I quickly cracked his hidden wall safe and extracted a ledger detailing millions of dollars in illegal offshore transfers.
Just as I slipped the flash drive into my tactical vest, the heavy oak doors of the study violently swung open.
Julian stood in the doorway, holding a crystal glass of whiskey and a suppressed handgun aimed directly at my chest.
He did not look surprised to see me dressed in tactical gear.
He smiled that same sickening, arrogant smile, taking a slow sip of his expensive drink.
He told me he had known someone was snooping in his hospital servers, but he never expected his sweet mother-in-law to be a highly trained corporate spy.
I slowly raised my hands, pretending to be caught off guard by his sudden appearance.
I asked him to let Clara go, offering to disappear with her and never speak a word of his illegal empire.
Julian laughed out loud, stepping closer to me with the gun raised to my head.
He whispered that letting us go was completely out of the question.
He proudly announced that he had just fed Clara a specialized labor-inducing drug hidden in her nightly tea.
Her blood pressure was already spiking to critical, life-threatening levels.
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He smiled wickedly and informed me that the fatal C-section had been moved up to tomorrow morning.
Before he could pull the trigger, I dropped a flashbang grenade directly at his expensive leather shoes.
